These Fierce Drag Queens Protested at the Border to Raise Money for LGBTQ Asylum Seekers

“Drag queens from across the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, which sits on the U.S.-Mexico border, gathered Saturday in front of an existing border structure in Brownsville to host a No Border Wall Drag Protest,” reports NBC News. “They said their goal was to show people there is no border crisis and voice opposition to more barrier construction in the region. All the money raised by the protest will go to LGBTQ asylum-seekers.”

From The Hill: The Brownsville Herald noted that funds raised from the event would be donated to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) and Organizacion Latina de Trans en Texas, a pair of nonprofit groups that offer assistance to other groups and individuals.

“Beatrix Lestrange, who organized the performance” told NBC News that the vision for the event was to “perform in front of this wall and project our beauty and our glamour and our empowerment against this symbol that stands for hate, racism and xenophobia.”

“All of these things that aren’t really happening in our community,” Lestrange said.

Lestrange told The Brownsville Herald last week that the event would also highlight “the injustices LGBT people face when seeking asylum.”

NBC News noted that every queen lip-synced a song in a flashy outfit during the show.

Texas Public Radio which originally reported the story said: “Michelangelo De Vinci, whose real name is Sabino Ponce Jr., said this moment had personal resonance for him. His dad was once undocumented.”

“I know his struggle coming over and how he built himself from the ground up with his third grade education,” he said. “There are other people who are trying to come over here and do something better for themselves and their families — my dad being one of them and these other people as well — so they should get a chance to live here also.”

Each queen performed songs that ranged from Green Day’s “American Idiot” to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”